


Waiting Game

by pocky_slash



Series: grace coming out of the void [12]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Plans For The Future, Post-Episode 33, Pre-Battle, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 11:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20339629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: It's been five minutes since Aubrey, Duck, Janelle, and Thacker walked through the archway. In the eerie silence of the empty FBI compound, Mama gets chatty, Agent Stern has questions, and Barclay has an awkward revelation.





	Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still picking away at the Ikea story, but I may hold off on posting it until we see how the battle plays out.
> 
> (I have already promised that even if things End Poorly on the show there will still absolutely be a happily ever after for this series.)
> 
> Also, this ties up a tiny subplot that's been on the periphery since the first of these stories, one that started before I had any awareness of what people shipped or didn't ship. I promise it was never intended as a dunk on anyone, just something that I personally thought would be funny.
> 
> Finally, thanks to **heyjupiter** for continuing to read these over for me ♥

The moments after Duck, Aubrey, Janelle, and Thacker step through the archway are unnaturally quiet.

"So we just...wait?" Mama finally asks, breaking the silence. It doesn't quite break the tension, however, so Barclay tries to consciously make his shoulders relax instead.

"The plan wasn't, like, great," Barclay admits. "But that's the gist of it, yeah. Minerva--that's Duck's friend, you'll like her--is going to open some alternate pathways to Sylvain to release the pressure on the Quell. Or I guess she already did that. In theory, these guys going through here should keep it from pouring out of the arch in this location, but who knows--we have no idea what we're doing."

"That's comforting," Mama says, eyeing the arch. Agent Stern has provided her with a gun that she has trained on the archway, same as Stern's own, but Barclay is left with nothing to do with his hands. He twists his fingers together impatiently. "Okay, fine. We'll wait and see what happens." 

Barclay shrugs. "Yeah," he says, and they slip back into silence. He checks his watch--the rest of the Pine Guard has been gone for a minute, tops. They could be here all night, sitting in here staring at nothing while the others out in town fight for the planet's future.

While _Indrid_ fights for the planet's future.

He closes his eyes and forces that thought from his mind. It's stupid. They already had this fight. Barclay chose this position, and he chose it with the assumption that it would be more dangerous than the fighting in town. It might still shake out that way if the Quell gets around Aubrey and Duck and Janelle and Thacker, but until then, he can't help but worry about what his boyfriend is doing right now.

Fiancé.

Whatever.

_Fuck_.

It's Stern who next breaks the silence. He clears his throat hesitantly, the three of them still crouched on the ground, Stern's weapon unwavering even as he speaks. "So...you were Bigfoot?" he asks. When Barclay told him they would have a conversation about this, he figured it would be much, much later. Or, ideally, they'd all die in the fight to come and they would never have a conversation about this at all. "All this time that we were at the Lodge?"

"Yup," Barclay says. "And for many years before that."

Mama snorts, but doesn't look away from the archway.

"I guess that's why you were so weird around me, huh?" Stern says.

"Yeah, well," Barclay says, "I was afraid you were going to blow my life up and put me in a cage, and, no offense, but it looks like I was right with that one." He glances around at the pop-up FBI facility and then glances at Stern with his eyebrows raised. There's a mean edge to the words that he doesn't necessarily intend, but it's been a fucking stressful two months and one of his best friends has spent them in a jail cell at Stern's behest.

Stern has the decency to look a little ashamed, at least, as he says, "Okay, point taken, that's fair."

The silence settles again and Barclay tries not to strain to hear signs of battle outside of the compound. Not for the first time, he curses the National Radio Quiet Zone. What he wouldn't give for a walkie-talkie or a cellphone to check in on his friends, likely fighting for their lives outside while he sits here and stares at a pile of rocks.

"How've you been, Barclay?" Mama finally says, before Barclay can further spiral in that direction. He's not sure if she knows him well enough to sense his anxious thoughts or if months of being cooped up with no one to talk to is nudging her into the sort of idle chatter she'd normally avoid. Either way, he's grateful for the distraction--any distraction.

"We're managing," he says. "The town's been...pretty fucked up while you were in here, to be honest." He shoots a look at Stern. "But we're making do, like Aubrey said."

"Good," Mama says. "I knew I could count on you all. But like I said to Aubrey, I wasn't ever worried about that--that's not what I'm asking." She raises her eyebrows at him, the real question hanging in the air between them.

"Uh. I've been better, I guess." It's hard to scrape together a more complex answer than that, thinking back on the insanity of the last two months. "But I'm surviving."

"How's the boyfriend?" she asks, and she must be really desperate for conversation if she's willingly bringing up Indrid in conversation.

"He's...okay," Barclay says. "He's...um." He considers how to phrase this. "I think if we survive this, he's getting promoted?"

"Promoted to what?" she asks.

"Well...first to fiancé, I guess," he says, "and then...you know...."

For one of the first times in their long relationship, Mama looks truly stunned. Her mouth hangs open, just a little, and under other circumstances, Barclay thinks he would enjoy seeing her so shocked. As it currently stands, with the two of them facing down their possible death by alien invaders, with only an FBI agent intent on destroying their lives for company, all he can manage is a weak shrug.

"No shit!" she finally manages to say. "You tellin' me you're engaged? Since when?"

Barclay shrugs again. He can feel himself flushing. "Um, about four hours ago?" Mama makes a tiny noise of disbelief. "He just kind of...sprung it on me while we were talking about something else. There was a...minor miscommunication and I guess he thought we had discussed it. We hadn't. But, uh, I'm not opposed to the idea." He rubs the back of his neck and bites back a smile. He's still a little out of sorts about the concept as a whole--still a little blindsided that this is something he's even allowed to want or have--but the more it settles in his head, the more he's desperate for it. It could just be his self-preservation instinct kicking in and giving him a reason to want to live, but the idea of standing up in front of their friends and making his intentions known calls to something deep within him. He wants this. He wants to call Indrid _his_.

"You could do worse," Mama says after a moment. "He's not as bad as I thought, to be frank. Not as bad as some of the others. Like that Mitch guy. What'd he ever do for you?"

"Mitch." Barclay winces. When will he ever live down his string of terrible boyfriends? Shouldn't this teasing have stopped once he and Indrid got serious? "He was, admittedly, a real jerk. But there are a lot of things he did for me and none of them are things I want to discuss with you and an FBI agent or...anyone, really." He gives Mama a pointed look and she snickers.

"Fair enough," she says. "Point is, the boyfriend could be worse."

That's high praise from Mama, who's looked at every other guy he's ever introduced her to like something she scraped off the sidewalk. It's especially notable given how much bitching he did about Indrid in those first years he was at the Lodge, hurting and lonely and heartbroken, even though he had been the one to walk out.

"I think he'll be genuinely touched to hear that," Barclay says. "Don't get me wrong, he's still totally an asshole, but in a good way, I guess? In a way where I'm in on the joke." Mama huffs, but she's smiling. And, with death staring them down, he feels compelled to add, "And, you know, I love him. I never really stopped. And he's been just...I don't know, he came back into this with a totally different attitude. Like he was determined to get it right this time."

Barclay swallows and tries not to think about Indrid out there, fighting the Quell. Why the fuck did they waste so much time? Why didn't he push for Indrid to visit more often? Why didn't he take a few weeks off and travel with him again? Even putting aside their years of separation, they could have made so much more of the last six months and instead they let it slip by without a second thought.

"Well, congratulations to you and the boyfriend both," Mama says gently, nuding Barclay out of his anxious spiral. "Although, damn, I guess I gotta start calling him the husband, huh?" Barclay doesn't mean to make a panicked face, especially not after falling down a mental rabbit hole of how much time he wasted and how he wants to be with Indrid forever, but it's automatic. That's a very loaded word. "Unless...you _wanna_ get married, right?"

"I do," he assures her quickly. "I do. I just haven't thought about it in years--even just the possibility of it, Indrid aside." She nods and he sighs. "Mostly I'm just pissed that I kind of have to live now, when I was sort of looking forward to dying."

He means it as a joke, but it's dark, even for him, and not entirely in jest. It was so much easier to accept that the world was going to end. It was so much easier to plan for armageddon and have anything else be a pleasant surprise. He's not suicidal, but there was a sort of comforting nihilism in anticipating the end of everything.

Living means cleaning up the mess that's inevitably going to be left behind. Living means dealing with the fact that Far Too Many people know that he's Bigfoot. Living means the scrutiny of the government and figuring out what comes next. It's almost too much.

But living also means building a life with Indrid, and that's worth fighting for.

"Well, sorry to say, but it's not happening on my watch," Mama says. "You deserve some goddamn happiness in your life and I'm not lettin' anyone else walk you down the aisle, so we both better make sure we make it through this."

"In that case, I guess I have no other choice," Barclay says, and offers Mama a small smile. She smiles right back. Fuck, he missed her.

The three of them are quiet for a moment, staring at the gateway in anticipation. Still nothing. It's now been a little less than five minutes since their friends stepped through.

Stern breaks the eerie silence again, as they fall over the five minute mark. "Does your, um, boyfriend know that you're...Bigfoot?" He glances quickly to the side and then back at the gateway when he sees Barclay watching him.

Barclay is formulating a reply when Mama says, "Well, the boyfriend's Mothman, so--"

Stern's head whips around, eyes wide, abandoning subtlety altogether. "_What?_" he squeaks.

"Mama!" Barclay says helplessly.

She rolls her eyes. "What? The goddamn world's ending, doesn't much seem like it matters anymore!"

"It's not your secret to tell!" Barclay says. "It's not even my secret to tell!"

"Indrid...Indrid _Cold_," Stern mutters to himself.

"I told him he should use an alias, but he never listens," Barclay says, but Stern isn't paying attention.

"People have always speculated that the two might be related," he continues, mostly to himself. "The Grinning Man and the Mothman." 

Stern's shock seems genuine enough, which throws Barclay off. Stern's always been...well, _weird_ around Indrid. Asking too many probing questions, watching him with more suspicion than Barclay was comfortable with.... Indrid always assured Barclay that he'd be able to tell if Stern was on the brink of exposing him, but it didn't make Barclay feel much better.

"He does have a weird smile, your boy," Mama says.

"It's charming," Barclay says. Then he thinks about it for a moment. "Ish. When you get used to it. Or, I don't know, maybe something in my brain is broken and that's just the sort of thing that does it for me now." More likely, it's an embarrassing end product of being in love--he finds many things about Indrid charming now. Indrid is, objectively, not that attractive. At least, not in the way most of the other guys that Barclay has dated are. Not by Earth standards. And even by Sylvan standards, which rely much more on status, wealth, power, and manners, Indrid doesn't really rank. He was Court Seer for a long time, which isn't nothing, but he's also purposely obtuse and condescending and half the time has no patience for civility and basic manners.

No, Indrid is definitely a tire fire by the standards of any planet that Barclay has lived on, but the heart wants what it wants and he fell hard for Indrid fifty years ago and has never fully recovered.

"There are a lot of things that...seem to make more sense now." Stern glances up at Barclay, seemingly shaking off his shock. He looks from Barclay to Mama and then down at his hands. He's...flustered? "The reticence of the people who lived at the Lodge. The way you and Aubrey and everyone else would get so vague. And, I suppose your nerves make a lot more sense now too. You always seemed so nervous when I was around."

"Yeah, that would be poorly disguised anxiety and terror," Barclay says with what he hopes is a kind smile. He still needs to train himself out of wanting to run whenever he sees Stern--although, who knows, maybe he's being premature with that decision. Maybe Stern is going to turn on them the second the end of the world gets settled. Maybe Barclay still has a future as a lab rat ahead of him.

He can't think that way right now, though. There's too much else to worry about. He needs to take things as they come--not really something he's ever excelled at, to be honest.

"Makes sense," Stern says. He's staring off into the distance, not quite at the archway but past it, though his gun is still steady. "Ha. It seems...silly now...but since it was...so localized to me, I guess I wondered if maybe, I don't know...maybe it had something to do with me as a person."

And then several things start to slot into place in Barclay's mind. Stern's ample smalltalk with him. The solicitous comments and offers for help. The way he got particularly testy and standoffish around Indrid.

Oh, holy _shit_.

"If he knew this was going to happen and he didn't tell me I'm going to _kill him_," Barclay mutters to himself. 

"What?" Stern asks, turning to him.

"Nothing!" Barclay says too quickly. He's going to die from mortification on the spot, Quell be damned. "I definitely need to survive now so that I can murder my fiancé for not giving me--ugh."

Funny how he doesn't even hesitate using the word _fiancé_ this time. Months he's been going around, scared out of his mind that Stern was on a Bigfoot hunt and spending way too much time trying to chat with Barclay, terrified that meant that he _knew_ somehow. He's spent almost a year talking himself down from anxiety spirals that ended in Stern sneaking into his room and hauling him off to some research facility.

All that time and it turns out that Stern was probably fantasizing about sneaking into his room for other reasons.

If Indrid knew this entire time and didn't share this information, Barclay will actually throttle him.

"I'm sorry," Stern says, frowning. "I'm not following."

"Nevermind," Barclay says. "I'm just...thinking out loud. Um, anyway, sorry if I caused any confusion. Don't, um, take it personally? I was just scared."

"Oh."

"With good fuckin' reason," Mama mutters, and makes a show of looking at the canvas and plaster walls surrounding them.

"I am sorry about that, Ms. Cobb," Stern says.

"Yeah, well, s'gonna take a lot more than 'sorry' to make up for keeping me in a goddamn prison cell for two months for no good reason." Then, in a slightly uncharacteristic show of mercy, she adds, "But if you help us take this shit down and promise to leave my people alone, maybe we can work something out where I don't try and sue the shit out of the whole lot of you." The words are still sharp on the surface, but they're delivered with just enough compassion to ease the sting. Stern offers her a wry smile in response.

"I'll do my best, ma'am," he says.

"In the meantime," she continues, "You--point that gun at the archway." Stern immediately shifts to square his shoulders and turns his attention on the archway. "And you--stop worrying about your boyfriend and get ready to fight. We've got a long night ahead of us, boys--there'll be time for chit-chat later."

"Yes, ma'am," Barclay says. A smile creeps across his face, unbidden. Mama is back.

Mama is back and Indrid is out there somewhere and the future of their whole world is on the line, but for the first time, Barclay feels like maybe they'll come out victorious after all.

Barclay offers Stern a small smile, which he returns. Then he glances at Mama and focuses on the archway, straining to hear any danger that might be headed their way. They have a battle to win--they can figure the rest out later.


End file.
